Q: What is the purpose of this blog?A: To store information of the UMCA violations in one place for concerned UMCA members to review anytime and use as a reference.

Q: What is the SaveUMCA Team's goal?A: We currently don't expect much to happen. The current UMCA government chose to ignore the long list of violations, and moved on, which upset hundreds of UMCA members.

Q: Wait a minute, why bring this fight back to the community? We are sick of all the public fighting that happened since December 2006! Why don't the UMCA and its members try to work out things like adults behind the scenes?A: We were in fact having red flags for nearly three years now. The activists finally brought this to the public's attention after the sale of RAAM, and some very sketchy dealings. We hoped this wouldn’t have to happen this way, but the UMCA members outside the UMCA government were asking us what was going on for a long time now. Then the recent Board of Director’s election resulted in some very deceptive and unethical ploys by the UMCA management in favor of six particular candidates.

Q: It looks like the SaveUMCA Team spent a lot of time putting the blog together. How come the team is doing it even though they expect little or nothing to happen?A: We strongly feel that the UMCA members have the right to know what is going on. We want to remain optimistic that if members know what is going on, positive changes can be made. The UMCA is a non-profit association, with 501 (c) 3 tax advantages and money raising capabilities, and by law, must behave responsibly as a representative democracy.

Q: Why does SaveUMCA Team care so much about UMCA's non-profit status?A: For a very long time, the UMCA members were fighting hard to turn UMCA into a non-profit organization and finally obtained it in 2003. These members were hoping that when it became a non-profit organization, with all the formalities, that it would no longer be characterized by dictatorial, secretive management, but that does not appear to have worked and was in fact becoming worse.

Q: We got the September-October 2007 magazine in mail recently and it looks like UMCA's attorney, Steve Larson, has reviewed the actions of the UMCA and found nothing illegal.A: We suspect that he didn't know everything that has been going on and we would like to chat with him. We will be happy to show him the solid evidence we put together here.

Q: What do you want us to do?A: All UMCA members are the owners of the UMCA. It's your organization and if you are someone whose cycling records were largely ignored, you will want to put a stop to this dictatorship. (This is why some UMCA members fought to turn the UMCA into a non-profit organization.) The UMCA’s primary income comes from your membership fees along with donors and sponsors. All of the people on the SaveUMCA Team have different ideas on how to approach this problem, but we do have one thing we can agree on and it was letting the other owners have a chance to know. It is entirely up to you to decide what to do about your ownership.

Any questions and comments can either be commented on this blog or send privately to the team's e-mail address:

Point of interest:X. Termination for Cause. "Termination for Cause" shall mean termination of employee's employment by the UMCA by reason of the following: (I) Employee's willful dishonesty towards, fraud upon, crime against, deliberate or attempted injury or bad faith action with respect to the UMCA; or (ii) Employee's conviction for any felony crime (whether in connection with the UMCA's affairs or otherwise). In the event of termination without cause, the UMCA shall pay to Hughes an amount equal to 12 months at the current year's salary. Further, the UMCA will grant to Hughes for a term of three years two full pages (or four half-pages) for advertising in each issue of UltraCycling magazine at no cost to Hughes.

(Instead of being terminated for violations listed below, Hughes was recently given a raise by the UMCA Executive Committee on June/July 2007.)

Starting on January 1st 2008, Mavis is hosting her own personal public blog containing letters to the UMCA. The UMCA didn’t directly answer any of Mavis questions as of this post, but UMCA now have a Board Liaison, Rick Hays, who is eager to help take down the wall between the members and the Board. Even through he was not elected by the UMCA members, Mavis is happy about the UMCA starting to talk again. You can follow the updates in the links below:

Rick Hays seemed to be unable to answer all of the questions. Instead of answers to the questions going unanswered since beginning of January, RAAM LLC's attorney mailed Mavis a lawsuit threat letter on Feburary 14th. Click on link for the evidences:

Mavis tried once again to open up the communicating channels by giving UMCA a set of pointers and they were unanswered as of this post. However, one thing did expose from this ordeal: Chris "Hoppo" Hopkinson, UMCA's endorsement letter's candidate and now UMCA Vice President, acted unprofessionally. A special post was made for reviewing the discussion (and how frustrated some people were.) Click on link for this post: